Another question about factory repair. When the ger evacuated a tank for repair it was removed from the unit and reissued to which ever unit needed it after repairs in the interior. I guess what I am poking for is info on ger tanks that dissaper from the op, short and long term repair str of units. The overall str drops much more then reported total losses could accomadate.

Such as the s503rd tiger bat in normandy july 44. Although I have never seen any report of tigers des for the 503rd during this time. The overall losses according to a western front report for all of normandy showed 4 des tigers over about 10 days. During this period the total str for this bat dropped from all 45 accounted for on the 17th of july. To a min of 29 acounted for at the end of the month. NOTE this report after the 17th never lists long term repair. So thier is no way of bing sure about this case. But to suffer a drop in total str of LESS than 16 tanks during a time when 4 were des over the entire normandy area seems unlikly. One way to account for this discrepancy is that a big chunk of this 16 were sent back for repair at factories and totally removed from the units fwd str reports. New tigers II were issued to the unit to make up this shortfall as replacments 14 in tot left germany at the end of july.

Also tied up to this whole factory repair question but more centered on the rus reporting. According to kiroshevs (sp?) offical numbers alsmost 100,000 tanks were des. According to one russian I know the definition they use is irecoverable which includes tanks removed from the front line for rebuild or repair at factories. I don't have this book and would be interested if someone could confirm it. The rus built almost 100 thousand tanks and lost 100 thousand tanks tanks and spSTGs. At this point you could see how thier army would be dep on inital tank str and LL more then most russians would have us believe. Now if 15% of all tanks des were rebuilt the ger avg for a few months in 43-44 that would mean 15,000 extra tanks would be around. Except that these tanks were propably reported as in the built numbers above. So no extra tanks of any type are around and unaccounted for.

Overall the situation seems understandable but when looking at individual battles and numbers reported in the same book... Do these numbers include tanks that were sent for repair which the ger des do not. Can you compare these directly or must you subtract or add factory repairs first.

According to the first source the number of tanks assualt guns and td built by ger was over 50,000 of which an additonal 2000+ were converted from other vehicles. Is that what they mean for rebuilt or repaired at forctory or interior? This is much less than the 15% of des rebuilt during a few months in 43-44. ONLY 5%!!!

From february 1944, the records show the number of vehicles issued from repair in Germany (still speaking of Pz IV):

Feb 44: 19
Mar 44: 18
Apr 44: 21
May 44: 28
Jun 44: 30
Jul 44: 26
Aug 44: 19
Sep 44: 20
Oct 44: 14
Nov 44: 8
Dec 44: 5
Jan 45: 4
Feb 45 : 1
Mar 45: 3
Apr 45: -

Total of 216. During that specific period 3,947 Pz IV were issued. thus it seems repaired vehicles accounted for about 5 %.

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Originally posted by Darrin:
Is it possible ger tanks in normandy esp did not get reported as operational because of lack of fuel and ammo.

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Originally posted by Darrin:
Another question about factory repair. When the ger evacuated a tank for repair it was removed from the unit and reissued to which ever unit needed it after repairs in the interior. I guess what I am poking for is info on ger tanks that dissaper from the op, short and long term repair str of units. The overall str drops much more then reported total losses could accomadate.

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Originally posted by Darrin:
Such as the s503rd tiger bat in normandy july 44. Although I have never seen any report of tigers des for the 503rd during this time. The overall losses according to a western front report for all of normandy showed 4 des tigers over about 10 days. During this period the total str for this bat dropped from all 45 accounted for on the 17th of july. To a min of 29 acounted for at the end of the month. NOTE this report after the 17th never lists long term repair. So thier is no way of bing sure about this case. But to suffer a drop in total str of LESS than 16 tanks during a time when 4 were des over the entire normandy area seems unlikly. One way to account for this discrepancy is that a big chunk of this 16 were sent back for repair at factories and totally removed from the units fwd str reports. New tigers II were issued to the unit to make up this shortfall as replacments 14 in tot left germany at the end of july.

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Originally posted by Niklas Zetterling:
First, I don't think there is anything unlikely in this. If a battalion has 45 tanks available, it is fully possible to suffer four complete losses and subsequently have 13 operational, 16 in short repair and – for example – 12 in long repair. I would not find anything remarkable with that.
However, I have come to believe that the report for Tiger losses up to 27 July is in fact premature. I don't think all losses suffered by 503. s.Pz.Abt. during Goodwood are included in the report.

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The problem with the s503 bat is that 14 tiger IIs were dispatched to the bat on the 27-29 july. Now assuming the report of the 27 july is correct up to this. Thier were always some delays or corrections but as far as we know it is accurate. That would mean 4 tigers des from 15th to the 27th of JULY all over normandy not just in the 503rd. Yet replacments were already rolling on the 27th 14 in total even though in theory no more than 4 had been des.

The 3/s503 bat handed over its remaining tiger I tanks to the 2/s503 bat on the 20th
and went to requip on tiger IIs. We are talking about an entire coy being without tanks. Something that would be difficult to comprehend with only 4 des in total. It is my suggestion these missing tigers may not have beeen des but were removed from the bat str. They were assigned for fac rep and new tanks were issued.

The ger would have kept track of tanks removed for repair in order to insure new tanks were issued to the correct unit. Thier must of been a second reporting sytem for this. Now the tanks that were listed as to be factory repaired may not have left the front and may never in this case of made it back to germany in aug 44 normandy.

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Originally posted by michael kenny:
The solution is not so complicated, these paper figures for destroyed Tigers are not accurate. The problem is the German practise of recovering every possible wreck and trying to fix it. Placing a tank in the repair category that does not eventualy get fixed has the effect of keeping the total numbers up whilst not improving the combat readiness. It all adds to the Tiger myth if you can say the Abteilung all had a good number of their initial allocation still on strength-despite most of them being hulks. This preoccupation with the total strength of the 3 Tiger Abteilung ignores the fact that the effective strength of each was only around the half that of the paper strength.

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Unfortunatly the other 2 tiger bats sSS101 and sSS102 both have very credible beliavable reports at least in jun and jul. Not perfectly accounting for every single tank in each report but within a normal margin of error. Not even having to account for any tanks sent back for a factory rebuild. It is only the s503 bat that has no known tigers des but was low and is missing a number of tanks. Since they weren't reported des during an entire week 20-27th jul they proably got sent back as factory rebuilds. The only other way replacments would be sent.

While your des tigers were reported as in repair does not account for the replacments being sent. Your theory that des tanks were reported in repair makes little sence since you only get new tanks when you report them as destroyed. Thier is no reason in the world any commander axis or allied would report tanks as being in repair when in fact they were des. The other 2 tiger bats seem to be reporting thier str correctly as did most of the tanks in normandy and elsewhere. The commander also seems to have litlle reason to place tanks in repair he knew were never going to get repaired. See Zetterlings replay I pointed out to you earlier.

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Originally posted by michael kenny:
The 14 Tiger II's issued to 503 in July were not 'replacements' for destroyed tanks but a re-equiping of a whole company. At the risk of repeating myself I stand by everything in my previous post.

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The coy did not have any tigers of any sort when your reequiping took place. Yet a few days before it had a full slate of tiger Is all brand new at the begining of normandy. The bat was totaly reequiped about 1 month before on the 20th of jun. Why does a coy need to be requipped with new tanks when thiers are no more than one month old?

Plus if the tiger Is had not been removed one way or another this bat would have endeded up with 14 more tanks than were supposed to have. That would have put them with 59 tanks -4 than might of been des. For a total of 55 tigers 10 more then they were supposed to have yet no evidence exists.

You say reequiping I and the ger proably called them replacment. To be fair the tiger IIs were different from the tiger Is and more retraining would be required then just stairght out replacments but that is what this was. The gers stopped prod of tiger Is only TIIs were avilable for replacment no equal swap or trade was possible.

The sSS 101 bat reported 15 totally des tiger Is by the 5th july. 14 tiger IIS left ger from the 28th july to 1st aug. Now do you call this replacment or reequiping and does it matter what we call it? No one allied or axis sent tanks to units that had not reported thier permanent removal from bat str. Esp not the ger who even you agree were struggling to fill thier armour units.

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Originally posted by michael kenny:
It all adds to the Tiger myth if you can say the Abteilung all had a good number of their initial allocation still on strength-despite most of them being hulks.

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Originally posted by Darrin:
IAccording to kiroshevs (sp?) offical numbers alsmost 100,000 tanks were des. According to one russian I know the definition they use is irecoverable which includes tanks removed from the front line for rebuild or repair at factories. I don't have this book and would be interested if someone could confirm it.

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Originally posted by michael kenny:
The solution is not so complicated, these paper figures for destroyed Tigers are not accurate.

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Do you refer to the paper figures concering the losses for Tigers in this particular period in Normandy or in general.

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Originally posted by michael kenny:
The problem is the German practise of recovering every possible wreck and trying to fix it.

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I think this has very little effect on the 503. s.Pz.Abt. during Goodwood. Many of its tanks were caught in the allied bombardment and British ground forces soon occupied the area. It would have been difficult for the Germans to tow away these vehicles. I have not seen any evidence that the Germans towed away many tanks that were so damaged that they were not worth repairing. The only thing I have seen in the records are complaints on the shortage of towing vehicles.
If the report of 23 destroyed Tigers in Normandy up to 27 July is incorrect, which I believe it is, this is far more attributable to delayed reporting or the simple typo.

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Originally posted by michael kenny:
Some examples: June 1944, '501' hands 9 Tigers to '509' and receives new Tiger II's. July 1944, '506' hands 11 Tigers over to maintenance and is issued with Tiger II's. Feb. 1945, '508' hands 15 Tigers to '504' and is withdrawn to train on Tiger II's. Sept. 1944 '509' hands its Tigers to '501' and is withdrawn for Tiger II training. Later it has to give 11 of its Tiger II's to SS 501 and then is issued with 45 Tiger II's. The same sort of re-issue and Tiger transfers took place within SS 101, SS 102 and SS 103. It was a routine occurrence within these Abteilung so why you should find it odd is, in itself, odd. It is simply a coincidence that SS 101 had a paper 'loss' of 15 Tigers and then got 14 Tiger II's. This was because only the 1st kp. was given them and 14 is the normal strength of a kp. 74 Tiger I's were issued to units in July and 16 in August and whilst I dont say they should have been given to the Normandy Front the fact is despite your denial that it could have happened a straight replacement was possible. So if you have read all the above you will see I have given you examples where units with Tigers were issued with 45 new ones, which you say would be strange. I have shown you how it was coincidence that ONE of the Tiger II issues NEARLY matched the reported losses of the Unit and that an equal replacement, Tiger I for Tiger I, WAS possible. I still maintain that the losses for these Tiger Units in Normandy were in fact higher than the paperwork indicates. As your grasp of the subject seems tenuous at best could you do a little more research before you next post.

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That tank units were orderered to do unusual things happened all the time and none of your examples apply to the tigers in normandy the 503 inparticular. Your wonderful examples are irrelevent unless you show it ordered and happened by how much to who. Whatever tiger Is that were issued as replacments did not go to normandy.

Go back and READ Zetterling posts and my first reply to you. Then try answering this one question that I posed. Why would any commander put tanks in thier repair depots when that does nothing to replace their loss? Then answer some of the other questions posed by me in my first reply.

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Originally posted by Darrin:

Thier is a huge gap between theory and proof that your paper books and photos does little to bridge.

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Originally posted by Darrin:

Just because you think 130+ out of 138 tigers were destroyed in normandy does not make it so. … But your overclaiming up to the end of july compared to ger record seems to suggests your method is flawed.

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Originally posted by Niklas Zetterling:
The whole 503. sPz.Abt. riddle hinges on the H.Gr. B report showing a total of 23 Tigers lost up to 27 July. It is worth noting that when we talk of such small figures, a simple printing error may cause great effects. Assume the clerk who wrote the report simply hit the "2" key instead of the "3" key. Then suddenly we have 14 Tigers lost, or a complete company. Such errors are not common, but they do occur. An example is the Gen.Insp.d.Pz.Tr. report showing 241 Panthers on the eastern front on 20 July 1943 (see appendix in 9 in the Kursk book I and Anders wrote).
Michael Kenny (unless there happen to be more than one Michael Kenny with an interst in Tigers) has, in e-mail to me, provided evidence suggesting that more than 4 Tigers were lost by 503. s.Pz.Abt. during the period. Wolfgang Schneider also gives a higher loss figure in his book "Tigers in Combat", though I don't know what source he has used.

[This message has been edited by Niklas Zetterling (edited 12-28-2002).]

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Micheal

I'm perfectly willing to acknowledge that thier might be normal reporting errors croping up from time to time. But this does not mean this was endempic and never corrected. It would also be rare. I mean what we are foucusing on is the lack of numbes for 1 tiger bat out of 3 in normandy and MANY other tank units. The ger reporting in general was accurate one bat off with a simple error or incorect repoort does not mean ALL ger reports are flawed...

OBW recods show

19 des tigers on the 15th of july
23 des tigers on the 27th of july (this is the one that may be incorrect)

The 101 records show 15 tigers des on the 5th of july. And almost all tigers accounted for towards the end of july.

The 102 records show 3 des until the end of july period.

The 503rd has no reported des but on the 17th of july EVERY tank was accounted for. Even the one reported destroyed by its own unit history by falling through a bridge on an approach march. In fact this mytery loss must have returned to the unit 4 days earlier than this on the 13 since EVERY tank is accouted for again. Which shows the problem of relying on unit historys and photo evidence when the OFFICAL ger reports clearly show otherwise on two seperate occasions. Two different reporting dates confirming the same thing inmdicates thier is no error or problem with the ger reporting.

The total des tigers reported by these 3 bats is 18 by the 15th of july report above. With only a max of a few missing tiger and 10 days from the 5th of july report to the 15th july OBW rport thier EVERYTHING is in agreement. The ger OKW reported 19 total des.

Up to the 15th of everything matches well it is the next 12 days from here to the 27th that something happens with the rpeoting again not for ALL tanks or even ALL tigers but to the 503. On the 17th 10 days before the OKW report the bat is fully accounted for. But on the end of the month 28-29 tanks are accounted for in op str reports and short term repiar. So acording to you thier might be 16 missing tanks. The only problem with this is after the 17th of july no long term repair numbers are reported for the.

Zetterling the expert says that this bat could easily have 12 in long term repair and 4 des by this point whch would fully account for all those missing tanks.

I ,definatly not an expert, sugest that while the bat may have suffered large numbers of undestroyed but permanently removed from the bats str and sent to factory for repair. Which would show why the des was low but replacements were sent.

Zetterling and I both acknoledge that the report on the 27th MAY have had an error. Even if it does this report made in error was not the normal case. The ger paper report to the archives were normally accurate. Any errors were not as widespread as you suggest. While I wouldn't bet my life on the 27th july report being accurate or inaccurtae based on your photos. I would tend to believe this and other reports by the germans until PROVEN wrong.

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Originally posted by Darrin:

Even the one reported destroyed by its own unit history by falling through a bridge on an approach march.

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This is a rather unusual incident. Such a vehicle will probably not be written off until a senior officer has permitted. As this happened on the route to Normandy, such an officer might not be nearby and given the fact that the unit was in combat, the matter probably did not have high priority, thus the formal decision may have been delayed.
To make any case about the accuracy of the reporting system from such an incident is not recommended.

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Originally posted by Darrin:

Zetterling the expert says that this bat could easily have 12 in long term repair and 4 des by this point whch would fully account for all those missing tanks.

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Thanks for calling me an expert, but I think I am an amateur historian. What is at stake here is arguments, data, evidence, logic, not authority or persons.

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Originally posted by michael kenny:
I do not say that knocked out Tigers were kept on strength to deliberately bolster the Unit strength but that Tigers were kept because it was thought they could be put back into service.In fact most never did get fixed.

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Originally posted by Niklas Zetterling:
This is a rather unusual incident. Such a vehicle will probably not be written off until a senior officer has permitted. As this happened on the route to Normandy, such an officer might not be nearby and given the fact that the unit was in combat, the matter probably did not have high priority, thus the formal decision may have been delayed.
To make any case about the accuracy of the reporting system from such an incident is not recommended.

[This message has been edited by Niklas Zetterling (edited 12-28-2002).]

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Originally posted by michael kenny:
Whilst we will never know the true daily losses for the Tiger Abteilung even the number of 15 total losses by 101 up to July 1st is suspect.I would suggest that some of the 19 Tigers listed as in repair on that date did not get back into service.

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